The Jests of the World Stage
by Theater Raven
Summary: A crossover with "The Man Who Laughs" by Victor Hugo. After saving a fellow disfigured soul from drowning, Erik finds himself ensnared in a conflict which threatens to tear his new-found friend from his true love, a blind girl.
1. The River's Strange Release

**Chapter One**:  
**The River's Strange Release**

No moon or stars shone tonight. The little lantern fastened to the bow of his boat was the only light Erik had. Its flame flickered falteringly as a cold wind blew down from the dark sky. Erik shivered, and the wind came down harder, as if it wanted to go on amusing itself with chilling him. Erik wrapped his cloak more closely about himself and he tried to look past beyond the ring of light the lantern cast out onto the water.

But beyond the feeble illumination of the flame, he could see nothing. The blackness of the river before him and the shadows of the sky above blended together so perfectly he might as well have been drifting into a void of non-existence. Perhaps he was, Erik mused to himself, which would explain why he had caught no fish tonight in spite of his many efforts. Yet no, he was indeed floating on a river, he told himself, for not long ago, he had perceived a dark shape up ahead, too solid to be a shadow, and Erik had been able to tell that this shape was a ship before it had disappeared into the awaiting night. Erik wished to see that sight again, however fleeting it may be, for he now drifted by himself on the river, and there are few places in this world so terribly lonely as the open water under a starless night.

Loneliness was something Erik was well accustomed to, of course, yet on this night, it seemed oddly profound. He would have turned back to shore at that moment in spite of his lack of a catch, but his stomach growled angrily in protest and Erik answered the grumble aloud in just as grouchy a tone.

"Very well, but once you have your supper, be silent, you never-satisfied scoundrel!"

Erik gathered up his fishing net and cast it out over the dark water. He waited as it sank, expecting it to still be empty as he drew it back to his side. To his surprise, however, he felt a great weight within the net as he began to pull it back towards the boat. At first, his mouth watered at the thought of having something to cook when he reached the shore, but as Erik had to use more and more strength to haul in the net, curiosity claimed him—this was no school of fish.

Erik at last dragged the net and its contents back into the boat. He paused for a moment to rest after the struggle, taking off his mask and splashing his face with seawater. Once refreshed, he turned to see what the river had yielded to him. Even in the deep darkness around him, Erik's fiercely perceptive yellow eyes saw that what lay before him in the boat was a man. The man was lying facedown and was so still Erik knew he had pulled a corpse from the water.

Erik had been kneeling by the man's feet and he now got up and moved towards the other end of the body. He reached for the man's shoulders to gently turn him over so he could respectfully cover his face with his cloak. Yet before Erik could touch him, the man moved. Startled, Erik stumbled back a few steps and watched as the man feebly coughed up water, then lay still again. Taking up the oars, Erik turned the little fishing vessel and quickly began to row back towards the shore—this man was barely alive, and while he was chillingly reminiscent of people who had fallen prey to "the siren's" song, Erik was not about to let this innocent fellow lose what little life he had left.

The rowboat grounded ashore and Erik leapt out, pulling it up more securely onto the sand. He then turned his attention to the man he had saved, needing to use all his strength to drag the weight of his limp body from the boat onto the beach. Erik laid the unconscious man on his back and then worked to light a fire nearby. After warming himself, he turned back to the man, curious to see what this poor soul looked like. What he saw made Erik leap hack with a surprise which made him feel sick in his heart, for he knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of such horrified shock.

The man who lay before him had neck-length, flowing hair that was as golden as the sun. His hand bore the rough callousness of hard labor, his figure was lanky and yet, even in its present stillness, graceful, but what had made Erik recoil was the man's face. It was disfigured and yet its shape was such that Nature could not have possibly been the one to create the deformity. Erik had had enough viewings of his own corpse-like face as well as the bodies of other misshapen men he had met at various carnivals to know that no one could ever be born with a disfigurement which was so symmetrically even. No, hands more sinister than Nature's playful fingers had worked at this face, and those sinister hands, Erik could see by the flickering firelight, had cut this man's mouth into an eerily comical grin.


	2. The Tragic Clown

**Chapter Two:**

**The Tragic Clown **

The man on the beach began to slowly stir out of stillness. Erik hurried to him, uneasily placing a hand on his back as he coughed up water. When the man's convulsions ceased, he turned around and Erik's eyes were again filled with the sight of that terribly-scarred face. The scars were not as evenly symmetrical as they had first seemed, but it was still clear their carving had been done with meticulous precision. Whoever had hurt this poor man had done so with the intention of creating upon his face the appearance of constantly smiling. Now, however, the fellow's eyes were far from merry as he glared angrily at Erik.

"You bastard! Why didn't you just leave me be?"

"Contrary to what many may say, I have a conscience," Erik replied stiffly, taken aback at the man's first words to him.

"You could have left me! I wanted to die!"

Erik was shocked into silence. For the first time, he noticed the man's age—somewhere in his twenties, thirty years younger than Erik. He could not deny that he knew what it was like to have such dark thoughts plague his own mind, thoughts that made all the beauty of the world nothing but bitterness, He was free of them now, and thanked God for it, but he still remembered the deep despair which had brought on such haunting thoughts. He wondered what had brought the young man to such grief that he had decided to drown himself.

It could not be receiving his scars, Erik thought, for as he looked at them again, he could tell they had existed for some time. The man had been gazing with sorrowful eyes towards the water, but when he noticed Erik studying his face, he turned up his shirt collar with a swiftness that said he was used to doing so and tried to get to his feet.

"Please, stay," Erik said gently, urging him to sit back down. "You're still very weak."

"I'm fine," the young man answered with a painfully familiar tart tone.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have looked so long. I know those stares all too well myself," Erik apologized, gesturing apprehensively to his mask.

"Stares? That's nothing. It's worse when they laugh," the young man said and again, his gaze moved out to the water. "All of them . . . except her. Dea. My Dea. I was going to join her."

"Through suicide?"

"Perhaps. She said without me, she would be unhappy, even in Heaven. I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't leave her alone up there. God would forgive me. God would understand."

The man drew up his knees and rested his head on them. He buried his face in his hands and wept. Then, in a torrent of anguish, he turned his face to the sky.

"Why is it that only You seem to understand?"

He wept again. Erik sat in silence, uncertain of what to do. The man's cries tore his heart. He could almost feel his own chest reverberating with the sobs. But he sat in stoic silence, for years of shutting himself down as a defense mechanism had conditioned him to be as unflinching as a statue.

At last, with shuddering breaths, the man managed to control his crying. He wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve, which was still soaked from the water in which he had flung himself.

"We were going to be happy. Here," he whispered, more so to himself—or her—than to Erik. "We were sailing to happiness. Sailing away from . . . "

"From what?" Erik asked, no longer able to control his curiosity.

The man turned and looked at him as if he were just realizing he was not alone on the beach.

"We were sailing to Holland. And there, I would have married her. I! I, to take Dea as my wife! What joy! What delight! I wouldn't have even cared that I would have to provide for us by—"

His fingers slowly moved up to his face, feeling his scars, and Erik could see the young man was shutting down just as he had earlier. Erik reached out and gently took the man's hand in his, pulling it away from his cheek.

"By doing what?" Erik asked gently.

The young man turned away. This poor soul, Erik thought, so much like himself. And yet there was only one way this child would realize that, a way Erik never would have used unless Fate presented these exact circumstances. Slowly, with an edifice of calm as his heart raced all the wile, he took off his mask.

"I became a monster," he said. "And my name is Erik."

The man looked. He saw. He empathized. He turned down his collar.

"I became a clown," he said. :And my name is Gwynplaine."


End file.
